Configuring your email settings on your iPhone or iPad

Once you have created your email account in cPanel and added it to your iPhone using IMAP, the Mail app gives you a good range of options for controlling how your email looks and behaves. Here is a walkthrough of the most useful settings.

Opening the Mail settings

1. Open the Settings app on your device.
2. Scroll down and tap Apps.
3. Tap Mail.

Everything below is found on this screen.

Inbox categories

Mail can sort your inbox into categories - Primary, Transactions, Updates, and Promotions - rather than showing one single list. This sorting happens automatically on your iPhone or iPad, so it works with any email account and you do not need to set anything up for it.

If an email ever seems to be missing, it has usually been placed in one of these categories rather than your Primary view, so it is worth checking the others.

If you prefer to see all your messages in one list in date order, tap the menu button at the top of your inbox and choose List View instead of Categories. You can switch back whenever you like.

Fetch new data

Tap Fetch New Data to control how often your device checks for new messages. There is a Push switch at the top and a list of Fetch options below it.

True push - where the server alerts your phone the moment mail arrives - is only offered by a few large providers such as iCloud, and is not available on standard email accounts like yours. You do not need to change the Push switch either way; your account ignores it and uses the Fetch schedule instead. The setting that actually matters for you is the Fetch interval at the bottom of the screen:

• Every 15 Minutes is the most frequent option, and the best choice if you want mail to arrive promptly. Fifteen minutes is as often as the iPhone/iPad will check in the background; there is no more frequent setting.
• Every 30 Minutes or Hourly check less often and save a little battery.
• Manually checks only when you open the Mail app. Choose this if you would rather not be interrupted, or to maximise battery life.
• Automatically is the default setting, and while it will check frequently, it catches a lot of people out as it only checks for mail when your phone is both plugged in and connected to Wi-Fi. Both conditions have to be met at once. In practice this often means your phone only updates email overnight while charging, and not at all during a normal day out and about. If your email seems to arrive late on your phone but is fine on your computer, this is the usual reason. Switch to Every 15 Minutes for prompt delivery.

Whichever interval you choose, new messages still appear straight away while you have the Mail app open and on screen - the interval only governs how often your phone checks in the background.

Privacy protection

Tap Privacy Protection to control how much senders can learn about you. Two settings live here:

• Protect Mail Activity hides whether and when you have opened an email, defeating the invisible tracking pixels many marketing emails contain.
• Hide IP Address stops senders from seeing your IP address and using it to locate you or link your activity across emails.

Both are generally worth leaving on. They affect only what senders can track, not your ability to read or send mail normally.

Message display options

Several options on the main Mail settings screen control how your inbox looks:

• Preview sets how many lines of each message are shown beneath the subject line, from none up to five.
• Show To/Cc Labels adds a marker showing whether a message was sent directly to you or copied to you.
• Swipe Options let you choose what happens when you swipe left or right on a message in the list, such as flagging, archiving, or marking as read.

Message summaries

If your iPhone or iPad supports Apple Intelligence, Mail can show a short summary at the top of long emails, and condensed summaries in the inbox list in place of the usual preview line. This is handy for skimming long newsletters. If you prefer to see the sender's own preview text instead, you can turn summaries off from the Mail settings screen.

Composing and sending

• Always Bcc Myself delivers a copy of every message you send to your own inbox, useful if you want a record outside your Sent folder.
• Signature lets you set the text added to the bottom of your outgoing messages. If you have more than one account, you can set a different signature for each.
• Default Account determines which address new emails are sent from when you start a message outside the Mail app - for example by tapping an email link on a website. This only matters if you have more than one account set up.

If you need help with any of your email settings, open a support ticket and we will be glad to assist.